As a nation we can be spectacularly pessimistic about our sporting abilities, but such an attitude overlooks the fact success and failure at the highest level are separated by a hair's breadth.
This was illustrated by Team GB at the Winter Olympics in Sochi twice yesterday, both times involving Scots.
The men's curling team, skippered by David Murdoch of Lockerbie, suffered a surprising defeat in the final, losing 9-3 to Canada. The failure of Murdoch's team to take Team GB's gold medal tally to more than one for the first time was followed by the disqualification of short-track speed skater Elise Christie in the 1000m, her preferred distance. It was the Livingston sportwoman's third disqualification of the tournament. Rather than castigate Murdoch and his team, we should be inordinately proud that they delivered the best performances possible throughout the competition and secured a silver medal.
We should also applaud Christie for her monumental will to win, and acknowledge that, at the age of 23, she is ideally placed to learn from her mistakes and improve.
Murdoch and Christie have done themselves, and their nation, proud. And that, in itself, is a success.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article